Out of the Lab and Into a Product: Microsoft’s Eric Boyd

As a partner with OpenAI — the company that recently wowed the tech world and the general public with its DALL-E image generator and ChatGPT chatbot — Microsoft helped to make those generative AI tools possible. But Microsoft has long invested in developing its own artificial intelligence technologies, for internal and external customers alike. And even when AI is not the centerpiece of a specific software program, it’s often driving how that tool — such as the company’s Bing search engine — works.

As corporate vice president of Microsoft’s AI platform, Eric Boyd oversees product and technology teams that build artificial intelligence and machine solutions for the company’s Azure platform and its AI services portfolio. Eric joins Sam and Shervin on this episode to talk about how Microsoft builds AI tools and embeds the technology in its various products, AI’s potential for helping to expand people’s creativity, and the democratization of AI. Read the episode transcript here.

Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.

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Guest bio:

Eric Boyd leads the AI platform team within Microsoft’s Cloud + AI division. This global organization includes Azure Machine Learning, Microsoft Cognitive Services, Azure Cognitive Search, and internal platforms that provide data, experimentation, and graphics processing units cluster management to groups across Microsoft.

Boyd joined the company in 2009 to create the Silicon Valley Search Ads team. In 2011, he moved to Bellevue, Washington, to lead the Bing Ads Development team before taking on his current role in 2015.

Before joining Microsoft, Boyd was the vice president of engineering at Mochi Media, an ads startup that was acquired by Shanda Games. Previously, he was vice president of platform engineering at Yahoo for 10 years.

Boyd has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from MIT.

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